


Dancing in My Dreams

by clutzycricket



Series: Pathways and Maybes [10]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Can I ever write something not a stealth crossover?, F/M, Fractured Fairy Tale, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:24:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8468737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: Wherein there is discussion of what two semi-Cinderellas do between the ball and the shoe fitting...





	

**Author's Note:**

> i've always had a weakness for cinderella, but tbh i wanted to know what happened after the ball and before wedding the prince. rhaenys as cinderella, maybe? or sansa.  
> -prompt

Once there was a little girl whose father loved neither wisely nor well.

Her mother died, because this was a fairy tale, and her brother as well, in blood and fear, and she was swept into the falsely kind arms of a lady with eyes like wildfire and hair like pale gold. 

She grew up hidden, in the secret spaces and the drudgery, to the torments of the lady’s eldest son. 

She grew, though, and in doing so enraged the lady, for she looked so like her mother, with hair like a raven’s wing and a low soft voice. 

The lady tormented her, insults and slaps and pinches, chores and ragged dresses.

But there grew a tree of blood oranges, in the center of the garden the lady had taken for her own with the girl. No ax could fell it, the metal blunting in the first blow, cleaving in two on the second. No fire could burn it, nor was there any effect from the furtive efforts of the magicians the lady hired, though some found branches and blossoms growing from their skin.

The girl, on the nights she wanted nothing more than to cry, to just stop, slept curled around the small tree, whispering her secrets and awakening before dawn. Not so in the winters, when it was so cold she needed to sleep on the hearth, so near the flames most would have feared burning.

_Rhaenys, Rhaenys darling, stay strong, please…_

_I’m so terribly sorry, if I’d known…_

So she lived, until another was brought under the dubious protection of the lady with the wildfire eyes.

Sansa Stark was terribly younger, with hair like blood and eyes like the sea, an uncertain smile and a painful air of innocence.

Joffery would tear her to pieces, she thought, as she heard the paper-thin story of Ned Stark being killed by bandits, the boy dripping poison with every word. Of the subtle tears and weakenings, and watched as the girl hid behind her masks. It took a bit before she could safely befriend Sansa, before the illusions were safely gone and Rhaenys could tell how the girl was going to change.

Then came the ball, weeping under the tree, and _Arianne_ , and…

Well, here they were.

The sharply elegant dress of red and bronze, with the dragonglass dancing shoes, was now nothing more than her dismal brown drabs, too cold for the autumn air.

Sansa, the maiden herself in white and silver, was again wearing a too-small gown of green linen Cersei had been forced to hand down to her, the six-and-ten year old humming softly to herself, smiling slightly.

“It was a lovely night,” Rhaenys managed, remembering the whirl of the dance and laughing without fear of being overheard, the dry tones of her dance partner as he made comments on some of the more absurd things going on around them…

Yes, despite everything, it had been a wondrous night.

“It was,” Sansa admitted, picking up a fold of her skirt and swirling it as she did when remembering something pleasant. She had not done that in months, Rhaenys thought guiltily. “Even if I didn’t get to dance with the prince.”

“We’ll need to prepare for them to arrive,” Rhaenys said, feeling terrible.

Myrcella, bless her, tried to make the ball seem dreadfully boring, as if making up for Cersei’s refusal to allow them to attend. Joffery’s plan to wed Sansa had been postponed and Rhaenys had seen the signed letter from the High Septon, dissolving the contract without fault, locked away in Cersei’s desk with her other papers no one else was meant to see.

( _Well, then_ , a tart little voice that sounded like her tree-dreams said, _she should have gotten rid of Father’s books on magic, shouldn’t she?_ )

There was still a raging discussion from Cersei about the girl in the white and silver dress who had danced with the Prince.

Suddenly very happy Sansa was abed, Rhaenys tried to hide her reaction to the woman’s vitriol about some “Vale-bred tart who kept with the prince until midnight.”

“Which lady was this?” Rhaenys said, a feeling of dread in her heart.

“No one knows, you idiot,” Cersei said, looking like a child denied a sweet. Well, a wrathful woman who wanted her daughter crowned and her rival to meet a messy end. “Though someone told me she was from the Vale, though there was some Dornish bitch dancing with the court magician so he couldn’t put a stop to the spectacle.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to dance with the prince, Myrcella,” Rhaenys said, unlacing the girl’s gown. “Was there anyone pleasant there you did get to dance with?”

“One or two people,” Myrcella smiled. She was Sansa’s age, and had never known life outside the manor, or without Rhaenys in the background. “ _Tommen_ got to dance with Lord Moonton’s heiress.”

“Did he really?” Rhaenys asked. “Did you approve?”

She managed to get through preparing the girl for bed, but it didn’t change her sense of dread, or the memory of grey eyes and a wicked smile.

 ~

Sansa clapped her hands over her face when Rhaenys told her the next day, when Joffrey finally spilled out of bed from his hangover and went off to do whatever young hellions did, and the younger Baratheons were escorted by their mother to some dinner.

“Oh, no,” Sansa gasped, knees drawn in. “I made a jape about all the girls making a line to dance for the prince, too…”

“Did he laugh?” Rhaenys said. Sansa shot her a look, but she seemed less prone to embarrassment as she admitted he did, and that Queen Lily had said something similar.

~

Myrcella was valiantly trying not to laugh as she came home, Cersei’s face like thunder.

“The prince,” Myrcella said, as Rhaenys unpinned her golden curls, “has decided he would like to know the name of the girl he danced with at the ball. She left a glass slipper behind, you see, and Prince Harry has decided to ask the Court Magician for help in finding her.”

“And he agreed to this?” Rhaenys, like every soul in the country, had heard the stories of Sirius Black, who had tricked a devil and helped the King and Queen when the last band of truly rebellious and vicious dark sorcerers had tried to kill them, fifteen years ago. They told about his temper and his trickiness, and the fact that his lady cousins had been supporters of the wicked sorcerers. 

Surely he had something better to do than play matchmaker.

“Apparently he was heard to say it would be a nice break,” Myrcella confided. “At least, that is what Lady Merryweather was told by Lady Tyrell.”

“Oh dear,” Rhaenys shook her head, pasting on a smile. 

She had to wait until Joffrey came home, rattling loudly through the house before collapsing in snores in his room. Cersei was asleep, both by nature and magic, and in her stocking feet Rhaenys settled in to pick the lock to Cersei’s study.

She gathered up the copy of the dissolution of the betrothal, of some important letters Cersei really should have burned, and a few other things besides.

 _Hide them under the flagstones of the fireplace_ , came a thought. _They’ll be safe there._

She lifted the flagstone, the wrapped bundle not leaving a noticeable rise in the stones. She’d pass them along to Arianne when her cousin returned, she decided. If this failed, that should be enough.

The next afternoon, Cersei was holding court over some lesser society friends, a task she loathed but regarded as a much needed evil to marry off her younger children. After all, the widowed wife of a mockery of a lord wasn’t as secured as she would want. Myrcella was doing embroidery as a quiet, well kept shadow, while Rhaenys was out of sight. 

The sound of hooves and the clatter of a carriage made Rhaenys look out the window, seeing a tall, dark haired man with a familiar mocking expression climb out, a small, dark woman in a lavender gown following with a wicked look of anticipation.

 _Well,_ Rhaenys found herself thinking, _that doesn’t seem like a terribly impressive hunt, now does it? Arianne probably explained everything…_

She immediately spun on her heel to go fetch Sansa, hoping this could be over without Cersei finding out.


End file.
